Beat Outta Time

I wasn't gonna write this.

Hell, at first I wasn't even gonna read the book behind this. I mean, from the get go it's clear that the protagonist (if you can call him that) is a twit, a dolt, a loser. Needy, seedy, vapid and null. Like some kinda invertebrate made of nothing but sore spots and numb thumbs. A Dubliner at a loss in the Big Bad Apple? So what. Then I thought back to my many years on New York's mean streets, what it takes to get over, get with, get through and get by, and I concluded:

There but for the grace of me go I.

Some dumb grace.

Indeed.

Mr DynamiteContrary to popular opinion, falling on one's face can be done gracefully, so can tripping over your two left feet, chewing with a foot in your open mouth, and cutting off your lying nose despite your battered face. Really. Just ask Jarleth Prendergrast, the so-called Mr. Dynamite (Dalkey Archive $13.95) of Meredith Brosnan's pitifully wicked debut. He'll tell you. If he ever gets that stinking foot outta his foul mouth.

A master pupil in the pick-yourself-up, dust-yourself-off, fall-all-over-again school of cold, hard knocks, Trendy Prendy (as he inexplicably fancies himself) is every big dreaming creativiste's worst nightmare—a thirty-seven year-old xerox copy boy with nary a name nor a dame nor a home to call his own. In other words: a failure. So far anyway. In New York there's always the chance that you turn the corner and get discovered. Then again there's also the chance that you might win the Lottery. Or get hit by a car.

Mr. Dynamite of course chooses door number three. Not literally—he's far too unluckly for that—but figuratively, in every which way you wanna figure. See, in living, as in life, Jarleth Prendergrast is a wreck.

It wasn't always that way. Once there was verve, there was pep, there was promise. There were avant films (Gumby's Big Score, Make Me Cum You White Bastard). And there were pregnant women. But the flicks sucked and the women were all outta their pocket-picking minds. Mad Martha AKA St. Martha of the Ghetto. Gwyneth Raptor AKA Esmerelda ("Prendy's Bane"). The Young Witch of Trim. And tiny Amelia Garrity AKA The Little Freak Who Ruined My Life ("Epitaph: she was very cute and very mean"). As Trendy P would have it, a harem of harlots hell-bent on his destruction.

But not if he can beat 'em to the punch.

Nope, can't blame the dames. After all, if they don't leave, they can be left. Mr. Dynamite, however, is stuck with himself. And that's no place for anyone to get stuck.

Our fuseless firebrand's also stuck on little Amelia, the 4'8" stripper junky vixen who pulls him around by the pecker he is. She won't put out (natch), even after years, which leaves Prendy pretty plussed. Why not, mon ami? He whimpers. Because of a filthy man named Pete.

Oh.

When Prendy's favorite midget is found strung up in some midtown flophouse, he vows revenge. It's not like he's doing anything anyway.

Yes, as you might guess, a drunk and delirious and deluded near-middle-aged Xerox copy boy (who by this time is sleeping on his boss's floor) might have trouble pulling off a hit, no matter how vengeful he may fool himself into feeling. That's where the fun comes in.

And Brosnan certainly pulls off a fun one. Written in a punctual dash, as if his Kerouackian ream were on fire and could only be contained with pyrotechnics, his Mr. Dynamite is a good solid racket of swaggerless hip-swinging and slap-happy snap. Imagine a Beat outta time, in every disrespect. Wrong era. Wrong tempo. Wrong heart. Wrong all the way around. It's that right. Dig.

Note: This article was first published online in the now defunct Bully Magazine. Supplied with immense thanks to Ken Wohlrob.

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